Category: China & HK

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Plenty of bottom signals

Global

Dow Jones Global Index is headed for a test of resistance at 320 after penetrating its descending trendline. Respect of 320 is likely but a bottom is forming and a higher trough would suggest an inverted head-and-shoulders formation. 13-Week Twiggs Momentum recovery above zero is bullish but another low peak would indicate that bears still dominate.

Dow Jones Global Index

North America

The S&P 500 continues to test the band of resistance at 2100 to 2130. Money Flow remains bullish but I expect stubborn resistance at this level, further strengthened by poor quarterly results, so far, in the earnings season.

S&P 500 Index

A CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) at a low 14 indicates that (short-term) market risk is low. Long-term measures are also starting to ease but we maintain high cash levels in our portfolios.

S&P 500 VIX

Canada’s TSX 60 is headed for a test of resistance at 825. Penetration of the descending trendline suggests that a bottom is forming. Resistance is likely to hold but an ensuing higher trough would be a bullish sign. Rising 13-week Twiggs Momentum is encouraging but a low peak above zero would indicate that bears still dominate.

TSX 60 Index

Europe

Germany’s DAX broke resistance at 10000 and is headed for a test of the descending trendline. Rising Money Flow indicates medium-term buying pressure. Retreat below 10000 would warn of another decline.

DAX

* Target calculation: 9500 – ( 11000 – 9500 ) = 8000

The Footsie is headed for a test of 6500. Rising Money Flow suggests decent buying pressure. Respect of resistance is likely but a bottom is forming and an ensuing higher trough would suggest a primary up-trend.

FTSE 100

* Target calculation: 6000 – ( 6500 – 6000 ) = 5500

Asia

The Shanghai Composite Index retreated below 3000. Breach of medium-term support at 2900 would warn of another test of primary support at 2700. Rising Money Flow suggests that breach of primary support is unlikely.

Shanghai Composite Index

* Target calculation: 3000 – ( 3600 – 3000 ) = 2400

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index broke resistance at 17000, a higher trough signaling a primary up-trend. Expect retracement to test the new support level at 17000. Rising Money Flow confirms buying pressure.

Nikkei 225 Index

* Target calculation: 17000 – ( 20000 – 17500 ) = 15000

India’s Sensex is testing its upper trend channel at 26000. Penetration of the descending trendline would suggest that a bottom is forming. Respect, indicated by reversal below 25000, would warn of another test of primary support.

SENSEX

* Target calculation: 23000 – ( 25000 – 23000 ) = 21000

Australia

A sharp fall in the Australian Dollar as result of record low inflation numbers may precipitate some selling by international buyers. Further weakness in iron ore would impact both the ASX and the Aussie Dollar.

The ASX 200 has also penetrated its descending trendline, suggesting that a bottom is forming. But bearish divergence on 13-week Money Flow warns of selling pressure. Retreat below 5000 would warn of another test of primary support at 4700.

ASX 200

* Target calculation: 4700 – ( 5200 – 4700 ) = 4200

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Lighting a fuse

The Fed quit quantitative easing more than a year ago, limiting total assets on its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion. But more than $2.5 trillion of cash injected into the financial system had been deposited straight back into the Federal Reserve system by banks as excess reserves, earning 0.25% p.a.

Fed Total Assets and Excess Reserves

Fresh money continued to leak into the financial system as banks drew down their excess reserves, highlighted above by the widening gap between Total Assets and Excess Reserves. In December 2015 the Fed doubled the rate payable on excess reserves to 0.50% p.a. The intention is clearly to attract more excess reserves and narrow the gap, or at least slow the rate at which excess reserves are being withdrawn to prevent further widening.

Easy money policies followed by central banks around the world are not achieving the desired result of reviving business investment. If we examine the Fed’s track record over the last two decades, sharp surges in business credit were accompanied by speculative bubbles — stocks ahead of the Dotcom crash and housing ahead of the GFC — with disastrous results. GDP failed to respond.

Business Credit Growth v. Nominal GDP

The latest rally in global markets is also driven by monetary easing, this time in China, with a massive surge in the money supply signaling PBOC intentions to print their way out of trouble (and into an even bigger hole).

Ineffectiveness of monetary policy in solving structural problems has often been described as “like pushing on a string”. But recent experience shows it is more like lighting a fuse.

This is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. For the resources of nature and men’s devices are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life …. and will soon learn to afford a standard higher still. We were not previously deceived. But to-day we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand. The result is that our possibilities of wealth may run to waste for a time – perhaps for a long time.

~ John Maynard Keynes: The Great Slump of 1930

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Iron ore: Only question now is how rapid the fall | MINING.com

From Frik Els:

According to Platts Mineral Value Service, a Munich-based iron ore and steel research company, domestic iron ore’s contribution to the Chinese steel market has declined from 36% of market share in 2010 to around 22% in 2015.

Domestic iron ore output from an industry plagued by fragmentation, high costs and low grades (only around 20% Fe) has halved since 2013 and may dip below 200 million tonnes Fe 62% equivalent this year…..

Even if more Chinese mines shut down and the shift to seaborne ore continues, the seaborne market is not exactly short of tonnage. All-in-all new seaborne supply set to increase by approximately 245 million tonnes by end of 2018 according to Platts MVS.

The big three – Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton – last week lowered future production guidance, but the aggregate 35 million tonnes in possible lost production hardly changes the oversupply picture and the giants would still hit actual annual output records even at these lowered levels. Citigroup’s analysts expect around an additional 75 million tonnes of iron ore this year to be shipped out of Australia, more than a third of which would come from Roy Hill. The Gina Rinehart mine has brought forward ramp-up plans and now expects to be producing at full annualized capacity of 55 million tonnes by the end of this year. Later this year, Rio’s board is likely to give the go-ahead to build Silvergrass which would add another 20 million tonnes of high-grade, low cost ore to the company’s Pilbara output.

Source: Iron ore price: Only question now is how rapid the fall | MINING.com

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China’s credit boom: How long will it last?

Where All The Commodity Gains Have Come From

Tyler Durden:

Trading in futures on everything from steel reinforcement bars and hot-rolled coils to cotton and polyvinyl chloride has soared this week, prompting exchanges in Shanghai, Dalian and Zhengzhou to boost fees or issue warnings to investors. Eventually, the excesses will need to be curbed and maybe that starts a new phase of risk-off within China.

As Bloomberg reports, While the underlying products may be anything but glamorous, the numbers are eye-popping: contracts on more than 223 million metric tons of rebar changed hands on Thursday, more than China’s full-year production of the material used to strengthen concrete.

The frenzy echoes the activity that fueled China’s stock market last year before a rout erased $5 trillion, and follows earlier bubbles in property to garlic and even certain types of tea. China’s army of investors is honing in on raw materials amid signs of a pickup in demand and as the nation’s equities fall the most among global markets and corporate bond yields head for the steepest monthly rise in more than a year. Hao Hong, chief China strategist at Bocom International Holdings Co. in Hong Kong, says the improvement in fundamentals and the availability of leverage to bet on commodities is making them irresistible to traders. “These guys are going nuts,” Hong said. “Leverage exaggerates the move of the way up, but also on the way down – much like what margin financing did to stocks in 2015.”

China’s fresh boom nears peak just as amateurs pile in

Tyler highlights the “irrational exuberance” in commodities futures markets but Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph nails the cause:

China’s reflation drive has been explosive. New home sales jumped 64pc in March from a year earlier. House prices have risen 28pc in Beijing, 30pc in Shanghai, and 63pc in the commercial hub of Shenzhen. The rush to buy has spread to the Tier 2 cities such as Hefei – up 9pc in a single month.

“The housing market is on fire,” said Wei Yao, from Societe Generale. “In the first quarter, increases in total credit exploded to 7.5 trilion yuan, up 58pc year-on-year. There is no bigger policy lever than this kind of credit injection.”

“This looks like an old-styled credit-backed investment-driven recovery, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the beginning of the “four trillion stimulus” package in 2009. The consequence of that stimulus was inflation, asset bubbles and excess capacity. We still think that this recovery will not last very long,” she said.

China Property Starts

Yang Zhao from Nomura …. said the law of diminishing returns is setting in as the economy nears credit exhaustion. The ‘incremental credit-output ratio” has deteriorated to 5.0 from 2.3 in 2008. Loans are losing traction and the quality of investment is falling.

“Be careful. We are nearing the point where things are as good as they get for the first half of 2016. We recommend taking some money off the table,” said Wendy Liu and Vicky Fung, the bank’s equity strategists.

….Michelle Lam from Lombard Street Research said Beijing has retreated from reform and resorted to pump-priming again. “This may last for one or two quarters. But how much longer can Beijing go on creating debt at a breakneck pace?” she said.

China Money and Credit Growth

Their actions reveal desperation at the PBOC. Faced with the unpalatable choice between running down foreign reserves at the rate of more than $50 billion a month, to support the dollar peg, or devaluing the Yuan which would fuel even greater capital flight, the central bank opted to inject a further round of credit stimulus to ease the immediate pressure. There are no free lunches: further credit expansion pushes China’s economy ever closer to a financial crisis.

We are in for a volatile year. Make that a decade…..

Source: The Stunning Chart Showing Where All The Commodity Gains Have Come From | Zero Hedge

Source: China’s fresh boom nears peak just as amateurs pile in | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

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China’s resurgent construction boom | MacroBusiness

Societie General on China’s resurgence:

In our view, the most obvious underlying factor behind this recovery is credit. In Q1, increases in total credit exploded to CNY7.5tn, up 58% yoy and equivalent to 46.5% of nominal GDP – one of the highest ratios ever. Credit growth accelerated to 15.8% yoy to end-March, the quickest pace in 20 months.

Credit growing faster than nominal GDP is unsustainable in the long-term.

Source: Special report: Measuring China’s resurgent construction boom – MacroBusiness

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The future of Chinese steel | MacroBusiness

Chinese Steel

From Andrew Batson’s interview with Cai Rang, chairman of the China Iron & Steel Research Institute Group:

China’s current steel production capacity is 1.2 billion tons, but domestic demand cannot completely absorb this capacity. In 2015 China exported about 100 million tons of steel products; this was a relief for domestic capacity but a shock to the international market. Already nine European countries have made antidumping complaints, and Japan, Korea and India have also complained. This shows that our country’s current steel production capacity is not sustainable, and must be genuinely reduced.

Now the relevant departments are drafting the 13th five-year plan for the iron and steel industry, and the preliminary plan is to first cut 200 million tons, and eventually stabilize steel capacity around 700 million tons.

How will a 40 percent cut in Chinese steel production impact on Australian iron ore exports? Not well, I suspect.

Source: The future of Chinese steel – MacroBusiness

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China trade: Food, LNG, coal to gain ground as iron ore exports slip | afr.com

From Ben Potter at AFR:

Iron ore sales to China are set to fall as a share of total two-way trade, while natural gas, food and even coal exports will become more important, the paper, China’s Evolving Demand for Commodities, finds.

A decline in Chinese crude steel production means iron ore’s share of China trade falls steadily from its current peak of 58 per cent to about 51 per cent by 2025 and 43 to 47 per cent by 2035, the paper, by Ivan Roberts, Trent Saunders, Gareth Spence and Natasha Cassidy of the Reserve Bank of Australia finds

Source: China trade: Food, LNG, coal to gain ground as iron ore exports slip | afr.com

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Iron ore price correction in full swing | MINING.com

Frik Els:

Iron ore is now down 18.3% from a high above $63 struck last week following an insane one-day rally.

…..SGX was the first to launch iron ore derivatives in April 2009 and so-called open interest – a measure of market participation – has surged to an all-time high in recent days according to data from the exchange.

The iron ore market has also gone into backwardation, an unusual situation where spot price are higher than futures prices…..

Source: Iron ore price correction in full swing | MINING.com

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Can ‘New’ Keynesianism Save the Chinese Economy? | The Diplomat

Excellent summary of China’s growth dilemna by Dr Yanfei Li, Energy Economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) [emphasis added]:

To conclude, national capitalism, which aims to help the Chinese economy move up the global value chain through technological catching up, can be considered part of the essence of the “new” Keynesianism – in other words, the Chinese approach to intervention in the current economic downturn. It will certainly continue to make significant progress in certain well-targeted areas, given enough time. However, there are two key dimensions to measuring how successful the strategy will be. One is the timeline: how long it takes for such efforts to be translated into significant productivity gains for the whole economy. Second, whether or not these selected areas, especially AI and robotics, can bring about a major productivity boost as seen with the IT boom in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In addition, national capitalism, a centralized strategy, is an intrinsically high-risk approach to technological development. Even with well-informed decisions, such as the case of Japan in developing HDTV, there are always surprises. The Chinese government can only hope that it has chosen the right technologies to pursue.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the other part of China’s “New” Keynsianism, namely the One Belt One Road initiative, which is about exporting the products and services of over-capacity, infrastructure-related industries overseas, also seems riskier than usual. Put another way, if these proposed infrastructure projects in targeted developing countries were attractive and low risk, they would have been financed and done. The fact that they are not itself implies higher risks are involved.

At this point, policymakers must look inward: They must identify and implement all necessary reforms to improve the micro-level efficiency of the Chinese economy. And this always implies the importance of truly open, competitive, transparent and fair markets for all industries. That is a vastly superior approach to the Ponzi game of emphasizing ways to manipulate the property market to keep prices climbing ever higher.

Source: Can ‘New’ Keynesianism Save the Chinese Economy? | The Diplomat

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